


Character

by Ori_Cat



Category: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
Genre: Cisswap, Depression, Gen, Infertility, Introversion, Nightmares, POV Second Person, Romantic Two-Girl Friendship, Rule 63, and bad self-esteem, everyone has norse names and i am not ashamed, everyone is the opposite gender AU, fin-kedinn has bad taste in friends, fun with etymology, not actually that much changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 13:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13975875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: The obligatory everyone-is-the-opposite-gender-AU. Some things are different. Most things aren't.





	Character

_Three things never anger, or you’ll not live for long_  
_A wolf with cubs, a man with power, and a woman’s sense of wrong._  
\- Mercedes Lackey, _By The Sword_

  


There was a man, and his name was Resurrection.  


(In retrospect, maybe this should have been a warning.)  


Presumably he had parents. Presumably he had people. Presumably he was born, once, in blood and water, and was tender, and had a loving mother who traced and memorized every line of his tiny body and an adoring father who watched him take his first steps. Presumably he had friends, and ate food and drank water, laughed, ran through grasses at the beginning of the spring.  


Presumably he did not spring fully formed from the roots of the mountains. Presumably he was - well, human.  


If so, nobody knows about it. All they know is when he appeared out of the greyness at the edges of man’s knowledge, entirely alone. All they know is how, finding people, he wound spider-threads about them and dragged them into the white net of his power. All they know is what he did, afterwards.

* * *

There is a girl, and her name is Death. She is human, that much is obvious - this dirty wild barefoot thing with tangles of hair and a laugh that fills the sky. She is also just a little bit scary, with her deep black eyes and endless enthusiasm for the world. With the way she always seems to be looking at things beyond people’s shoulders, dreaming as much as she lives. With the way she is touched - she almost shines, seen out of the corner of an eye.  


The boys of her clan gather in a circle round, trying to hem her in, and they taunt her, circling and stepping closer and farther away so that she cannot quite follow who is speaking. They push on her shoulders and “accidentally” catch their fingers in her hair. _Freak, mad girl,_ they hiss. _Failure of a girlchild, who doesn’t know her place in the world, who runs wild like a man. Disappointment to everyone, fool._  


She digs her toes into the grass, refuses to be moved. _I am more a man than you’ll ever be,_ she snarls back.  


When she returns the next day, the grass is thick and green in the traces of their footsteps. She circles it, and if she was not alone anyone watching would think there was a fine predatory shade in those steps.  


She steps in.  


There is no drumbeat, no fluting, she does not clap her hands or beat them on her thighs. She does not dance, just shuts her eyes and raises her hands, lets herself feel the wind, the shiver of the grass, all the tiny worlds layered below her feet, the souls that gleam like glass. Still, while the world revolves around her.  


This is the story she tells you later, the trick of magecraft. The trick of staying still. The trick of enduring.

* * *

There is a girl, and her name is Traitor. And there is you, left behind by your parents, shyness burning itself across your skin. As much as they told you you would enjoy yourself, and didn’t you want to learn so many valuable useful things, in the moment you would very much like to shrink away into your own shadow. In the moment you hate the entire institution of fostering, and everyone who has ever agreed that it was a good idea, and you would very much like to slam their heads against a tree until they changed their minds and decided not to do this to you!  


_Hello_ says the girl, _I’m Skoll!_ You’re still speechless and you cringe from the wave of her enthusiasm, but she ignores it and grabs your hand and asks _do you want to see-_ drags you around and introduces you to everyone until you are buried under a pile of names none of which you can remember and a blur of gentle interest, until you’re exhausted and your skin crawls and the only thing you can focus on is Skoll’s hand warm in yours.  


_You’re my friend now,_ she says, and for some reason you find that very hard to argue with. What Skoll says is what is.  


And when night comes and you all crawl into the shelter together, Skoll the traitor folds herself cross-legged behind you and plaits your hair, chattering vaguely about everything and nothing, and a part of you wants to rip your head out of her hands and run off into the night and be alone like you ought to be, and a part of you wants to press your scalp backwards into the softness of her palms.  


(This is love. It takes you a while to figure it out, you are not naturally good at loving like most people. Your family has said so, have compared you to ice - beautiful, elegant, utterly cold and unyielding.  


But it is possible - doesn’t always work, but is possible - to press a cord into ice without melting it. How else would the fragments of stone get embedded in the glaciers and the spruce needles in lake ice?  


It takes a few days to get it in. But by then you are completely lost - you are not good at loving both because you don’t know how to start and also because you don’t know how to stop, how to keep people from filling you up, how to prevent -  


Well. You have always been martyrish. Why should your friendships be any different?)

* * *

Your sister is thirteen when she bleeds. (You are fifteen, and have not yet.) But you watch as your aunt christens her a woman, watch her loose her hair to let the pain out and lay her down and mark her face with red. You watch her rise up, eyes soft and hair falling over her face, and there is something changed within her, now that she is a woman, and for a minute you fear that you will no longer know her, that she has become a stranger to you, trapped on the other side of that great barrier. But then she laughs and embraces you, and all is well again.

* * *

_Is everything okay?_  


You look up into the bright glare of the sun and the rich green leaves and the mostly-dark outline of Death, looking down at you. You didn’t even hear her approach - either she was been very quiet or you were very lost inside your own head.  


She seems to still be waiting for an answer, so you shrug. The truth is, you aren’t so sure yourself. You would like to say no, because you’re very lonely - you don’t want to be around people but you’re still lonely and you don’t know how that works - and you’re scared it won’t ever let up.  


_Mind if I sit?_  


You don’t answer this either. Evidently she takes it as a yes, because she folds herself down into the rustling leaves beside you, takes the same posture with her hands linked loosely around her knees, and looks off into the distance, as though that patch of white-tasselled nettles over there is thoroughly engrossing. If it’s meant to make you feel more comfortable, it doesn’t really work.  


_Do you want to talk about it?_  


_Not really,_ you answer. _But I think you want to listen. _  
__

She returns you your shrug. _Well, I didn’t want to pry either._  


You let out your breath. _I don’t know,_ you start. _I know I’m being selfish, I know I don’t have any reason to be unhappy, but well…  
_

__

__

_I’m just unhappy,_ you say. _And I shouldn’t be, I know I shouldn’t be, and I don’t - I’m really bad a people-ing. I don’t think anyone loves me, but if I asked they’d just say yes because they’re supposed to - I don’t know if anyone who says they’re my friend is really my friend, or if they’re all just lying to me. I’m not particularly clever or particularly strong or particularly beautiful; I’m not important._ It comes close to being a cry.  


(It might end up being the most true statement you ever make. Because even through everything else, even though in the future you will get to watch the fate of the world being written, you’re not going to be involved, really. Not _involved_ involved - it may brush against your fingers but its teeth won’t close down upon you, the way you will watch them close upon others.  


This is why you will be safe, when ruin comes and comes around again like mist re-condensing into rain. This is what will destroy you. The truth of the world is that every curse shines and every blessing has teeth, and you’re not sure which one being not-important is.)  


_Well, I can’t speak for anyone else,_ Death says, _but I’m pretty sure I’m your friend._  


She’s said it, not you. And your heart stumbles forward against your sternum, because isn’t this what you’ve wanted? Isn’t this what you’re scared of, that nobody cares about you back? Don’t you want people more than anything else?  


You do not smile, though, for you are worried there is some sort of trick to it. That somewhere your communication has broken down, that she thinks friend and you think friend but you don’t think the same thing. After all, it’s impossible to ever see out another person’s eyes, isn’t it?  


She picks up on this. Sighs. Drapes a warm arm over your shoulders. _I wish I could fix everything for you,_ Death says.  


_You don’t have to,_ you answer automatically. Nobody needs to save you. You shouldn’t need saving. Saving should only be for other people. 

* * *

_Guess what guess what guess what!?_ You stagger under the force of the embrace, the tight grasp holding your arms to your sides and her warm breath in the back of your neck. One of these days Skoll is going to choke you to death with her enthusiasm, but you pull her hands off - it won’t be today - and twist to get to see her face. Her hair sits odd and tousled - she must have run to find you - and her smile crinkles up the edges of her eyes. Her joy has always been contagious.  


_I have the feeling you will tell me,_ you say. _Whether I guess or not._  


She pulls a face at you. You relent. _Fine, what?_  


_I’ve been made mage!_ She almost bounces up and down with pleasure, trying to push the hair out of her face and clasp her hands in front of her at the same time and only succeeding in giving the impression of a slightly excitable chipmunk.  


Really? She has? Finally? This suddenly? _You’ve been preparing for this for how long -_  


_\- seriously seven years!_ she answers.  


You can’t imagine how proud she must be; this is everything she’s ever wanted. She has become what she must be, for you have never been able to imagine her not being a mage someday; near her you can almost taste power, like the scent of air after lightning.  


But another, colder thought sneaks up after you. _Does this mean that Etanan - your master -_  


She deflates a little. Nods solemnly. _I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t expecting it. And it wasn’t - it was kind, it was a good death. But -_  


_Bittersweet,_ you offer.  


_Yeah,_ she replies. _Sweet. Bitter._  


_Life goes on._  


_It does._  


_And how does Angrboða feel about this?_ you ask. You’ve never been sure whether their rivalry is real or mostly feigned.  


_She’ll be fine!_ Skoll laughs. _She’d better be proud of me, I’m her favourite sister!_  


_…Only,_ you reply.  


She gives you a look that makes it very clear you didn’t have to point out that little bit of superlative-reducing information.  


_You’ll do well,_ you tell her. _You’re responsible, you’re smart._  


_Well you would know!_ She slaps you gently on the shoulder - and that’s right, a spoilsport like you would know everything about responsible, wouldn’t you - and gives you another hug to show that she didn’t mean it. This one is around your waist and gentler.  


_Does this mean you’ll be too busy to see me this much?_  


_I’ll make time,_ she says. And you wouldn’t put it past her to try and do that literally, if it were possible. _After all, you’re my favourite friend. And I mean it this time!_ she amends, catching your raised eyebrow.

* * *

When you are seventeen, you stop hoping. The moon has passed you by, your body is barren as the winter with no spring to thaw it. You let yourself weep, bitterly and long, on your sister’s shoulder, soaking her tunic as she whispers at you vague comforting things.  


_It is all right,_ she says. _I will have enough children for the both of us, and you will be their beloved aunt. They will be as much yours as mine. Oh sister, I am sorry,_ she says, and rubs your shoulders in slow circles, breath hot on the side of your face. _I am very sorry._

* * *

Here’s the truth: you never thought it would be you.  


Because your mother’s oldest brother has no children of his own, but there is your sister and your three other cousins, and he could have chosen any one of you (or someone else, if he thought none of you were suitable) to succeed him.  


But out of everything that he could have called you to speak with him privately about, as the scent of the cooking meal and people’s laughter drifts across the camp at the very first edge of dusk, the one thing you did not expect is that he would would start (after the usual asking about your day that only prolongs your curiosity) with _You know I will not be clan leader forever,_ nor follow it with _and I will have to choose someone to lead us after I am gone._ You did not expect he would say _I would have it be you._  


The shock that runs through you should have shaken the stars out of the sky.  


_No,_ you want to say, _Choose my sister, for she is gentle and loving and everyone cares for her. Choose my aunt’s eldest, he is a great hunter; her youngest, who is exceedingly skilled with his hands; her middle, whose tongue quick and soft and compelling as moonlight.  
_

_I am nothing,_ you want to say. _I’m not important enough for this._  


He reads this within you, as though your skull has suddenly gone transparent. Or maybe it is just the way you press your hands under your thighs - you feel horribly awkward, like your limbs do not fit properly into the shelter; the way you can’t meet his eyes. _You think I have chosen wrongly. You do not think yourself capable of shouldering a responsibility like that._  


_No,_ you agree. _It should be someone else - I cannot, why should it be me -_  


_Who else would you trust?_ he asks you.  


He probably intended that question to be more piercing than it is. The answer to that is still _nobody_ , just as he had intended you to say; but you are not a very trusting person. The answer would always have been nobody. You’re not entirely sure what trust has to do with it, anyway. It’s not you that has to trust anyone else, it’s them that will have to trust you.  


_Not me either,_ you whisper.  


He sighs, and lays a large, warm hand on your shoulder. _As for why it should be you? I know you better than you think. I’ve seen you do your chores so steadfast the sun should envy you - and other people’s when you thought it needed doing. I’ve seen you give of yourself before even considering asking it of anyone else. And you are not self-important and you do not boast and you obviously do not want to put yourself forward.  
_

_It is not enough,_ he says, _to be skilled or persuasive or even to be wise. That will not tell you what to do, much as it may help you do it. You are a good woman, Finna -_ and he lifts his hand from your shoulder and taps you in the centre of the sternum, and it reverberates along your ribs - _and that is more important than anything else you may or may not be. You have grown into a good and trustworthy woman and I am very proud.  
_

_But if you are still convinced that you are wrong - well, I cannot force you. You may refuse. And I will not tell anyone if you do._  


You want to yell _yes_ , and run away as far as you can, and hide in the mountains where no-one will ever ask responsibility of you ever again and therefore where there is no chance of disappointing anyone. You want to grab the nearest person you see and shake them and beg them to make him see sense, you are wrong, too young and unformed and scared and -  


But that would be the easy thing to do. The selfish thing to do. And based solely upon those two claims, it probably wouldn’t be the right thing to do.  


You don’t trust anyone else. But you would also hate to be cruel and dump all this weight on someone else’s shoulders.  


You draw in a breath so deep it stretches all the tiny muscles in your chest to the point of pain, and let it out again slowly. _All right,_ you say, the words rock-heavy in your mouth but smooth. _I can be your heir._  


_But tell me how,_ you add, before he can get in another word. _Show me what I must to, teach me all that_ you _have learned as clan leader all these years -_  


_Of course._ He grins at you, and in that moment he is not your leader anymore but your uncle and that is the familiar look that says _oh child, I will give you what you ask but I doubt you will enjoy it._ You don’t care.  


The next day, when you pick up your spear to go on a hunt with your cousins, you imagine holding it up in defence of your people (yours, as though they were possessions, something you can claim).You imagine responsibility draped like a mantle over your shoulders.  


It’s awkward and heavy and it doesn’t fit quite right. Not yet. But it feels like it might, given time.

* * *

When your sister has her first child (with the man who wouldn’t stay with her, had swanned into her life and swanned back out leaving her with nothing but sweet fruit taste upon her lips and a tiny point of life growing in her belly), you stand in his place. You lay your hands on her, allow her to cling to your wrists, give her water. And when the child first cries her existence into the night, it is another stone chip driven into you, another rush of warmth that gives you the impression of thawing.  


Her daughter fits perfectly into the curve of her arms, and she runs her fingertips over every inch of her baby’s body, the little round curve of the back of her skull, the soft plumpness of her back and toes. And it’s around that time you start recrystallizing, start feeling a bit like an intruder to this perfectly ordinary miracle and to her motherly bliss.  


To try and crush the feeling, you ask what she intends to name her. (It won’t be official until eight days later, but you have no doubt she has been considering names for moons. What wish does she want for her daughter?)  


She doesn’t avert her eyes from her baby to answer _Horð._ Your niece to be beautiful as winter and strong enough to defend herself and her loved ones from anything she must. It’s a good wish - you would have wished her to be joyful instead, and kind, like her mother is, but she may be both. Fate isn’t an either-or game.  


_Do you want to hold her?_ your sister asks, and lifts the baby and her wrappings towards a suddenly-immobile you.  


Your niece doesn’t wake up when she is transferred into your arms, still pursing her lips like a tiny rose flower. But when you brush your finger against her palm she still closes her tiny fist around it, little perfect nails and silky-smooth skin, and it is like the sun rising.  


That bastard doesn’t know what he’s missing.

* * *

The next time you talk, Skoll is more distant. There are silences she doesn’t fill, sentences she bites back with sideways looks: something great is happening in her life, you know, and it doesn’t involve you.  


One-half of you thinks this is reasonable, because you aren’t anything, really. You don’t have the right to demand affection, care from anyone else, and why should she care about you anyway? You aren’t a mage and you are still scared of all your responsibilities and and and - well, it must be _something._ Otherwise she would still be your best friend, would still treat you like one should be treated.  


The other half of you can’t stop the hurt and hate that wells up within you like bubbles from the bottom of a lake, wants to break into tears right there. _Come back to me,_ you want to say. _I thought I loved you. I thought you loved me. What have I done to split this space between us? _  
__

__You said you would be best friends forever. You just didn’t realize how long forever _wouldn’t_ last._ _

____

* * *

In the future (once you’ve made it through, once they are all dead down to the last and you are left with safety and nameless welling grief) it will be known as the dark times. The part that will be remembered is the fear, just… endless fear, all the time. Something great was happening, as it turned out, and it has come to fullness now and spilled out sick and terrible as a storm of jagged ice over the Forest.  


There are stories of illnesses and famines and destroying weather and stolen children and haunting demons, wounds and regions that others have had to flee for fear of their lives or sanities or souls, and there’s a list of names repeated hesitantly, patched together from rumours passed between people and clans, shrouded in smoke and concealing defenses - you are put in mind of a spiderweb, or the delicate hexagonal patterns in a chunk of honeycomb, filaments joining centre to edges.  


There is a man named Resurrection, they say, and in his orbit like the edge of a spindle whorl around its shaft (at least as far as you can construct from the tangle of rumour) come the names Skaði, green and deep and cruel; Sevi, who wears a thousand faces; dark and clever Nott…  


…fine. And Angrboða and Death and Skoll, and you know you’re getting pitying and questioning looks behind your back, because either you have terrible taste in friends or terrible luck in friends or there is something deeply wrong with you that these are the people you loved -  


Just… stop it, stop it _stop it_ , all right? Your personal choices are not the problem right now. You and your people, all the clans are turned so much as prey in their teeth and you will all die or be overtaken and it is almost physical, this choking desperation seeping out of the cracks in the ground. However much your clan moves, you can’t escape it. You’ve been bound before you even realized.  


Maybe it’s easier on you than on the rest of them. Because you have never been a very trusting person, so the growing mistrust is nothing new. Because you have never expected the world to be kind, so the growing unkindness is nothing new. Because - well, you’ve always thought hope was a bit of a scary thing. And if the world has become dark and helpless, at least you don’t have to face up to that fear.  


Doesn’t mean it’s entirely easy. You (you personally) are not starving and you’re not ill but that doesn’t mean the sunlight doesn’t seem to have gone sick and black, doesn’t mean your sister doesn’t have to shake you out of terrible dreams, _Fin, Finna sister it’s me it’s just a dream Finna it’s all right wake up please_ wake up - Doesn’t mean you don’t spend more and more nights clawing yourself out of visions of the world broken down to all ash and bitter winds, of Angrboða driving a bone spear into your ribs or Death giving you that night-black smile, idly musing _I wish I could fix everything._  


(You should have known. Maybe that’s the hardest part.)  


You start sleeping less. You start eating less, and you know you’re not the only one, because everyone else - you have no children of your own body but you still have dozens of people you are charged with guarding and guiding - everyone else looks grey and shadow-eyed, and speech is quiet, hidden behind hands and cut off with suspicious looks.  


Just… endless fear, all the time. (If this was a story you could be certain of a happy ending, that the darkness would not last forever, the sun would dawn again and the earth be made righteous again. It’s not a story. You put your head down. You endure it.)

* * *

Then Skoll walks unexpectedly out of the woods, trailed by her husband.  


Anyone who has never seen women fight does not know how lucky they are. It is worse than men - men will just beat each other across the face a few times and call it even. And even if they choose to escalate, there is a limit to how sharp you can make flint.  


There is no limit to how sharp you can make words.  


You tell her she is nothing. You ask if you have ever been anything to her other than something to use when she needs and ignore when she is through. You say she has never loved anything, has she?  


She tries appealing to your mercy. She tries appealing to the law. _Monster,_ she hisses at you, and somehow that is the one that comes closest to convincing you. After all, how great must be this sin, that even the woman with shreds of flesh still caught in her teeth and death upon her hands would condemn you?  


But under the anger, you are still ice, unyielding. She can beat herself to pieces upon you and you will not give. And so by the third _No,_ by _Go away,_ she sinks back, knotting her fingers together hard enough that you wonder they do not dislocate, and spits _Fine_ across the crackling ash. Jerkily, she turns and gets up, snatching up her gear, shadowed half a second behind by her husband, who has been very silent the whole time.  


Her hair used to be the most beautiful thing about her. It used to be black as deep water and tumble to the middle of her back like cedar branches. But you can see it clearly now, and the ends have become broken and dull, and there are knots she has not combed out. You would say something, but what? You won’t waste your time reaching after someone you know is just going to break and break and break you, until you are dead or she is. You won’t waste your time with loving anymore.  


In silence, you watch her walk away into the woods.

* * *

You never see her again. And that is the end of the beginning.

* * *

(Not quite. Not for Skoll, who is still only three months gone, who runs to the family of her husband (like she probably should have done in the first place), and then to the deeps of the forest, and watches the turning of the moon until her time is come, and her husband carries her into the heart of the world and helps her loose her hair. There, nearly alone and in the tradition of her mother and her grandmother, the whole long line of her ancestors before her, she gives birth to her firstborn child.  


It takes twelve hours, and it is terrible and painful and bloody, and is the closest to transcendence that Skoll, who has spent her whole life searching for it, has ever known.  


And when her husband places her daughter, black hair slicked over her tiny soft skull and little fists curled, into her arms - the only thing that Skoll the traitor has ever brought into the world as opposed to taking away from it, the only good she has ever done - she bursts into tears. Right there, in the leaf mould and blood and the darkness before the dawn, the first she’s allowed herself to weep in moons.  


And that is how their god finds them.)

* * *

And _that_ is the end of the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Naming guide for the inclined. I tried to keep the implications/meanings the same more so than strict phonemic relatedness, and of course some names could not just be gender-flipped so I gave them new names.  
> Fin-Kedinn —> could probably keep the same name, but would probably lose an N off the end. Finna would be a diminutive, but then again everyone she talks to in this fic is a close friend/relative and would use diminutives.  
> Torak’s Father —> I have no base to go off but have headcanoned his name as Hati, the Norse moon-devouring wolf, so girl him gets Skoll, the Norse sun-devouring wolf. It does mean “treachery”.  
> Tenris —> Presumably an alteration of Fenris, which I could not find any grammatical way of feminizing. So I gave him Fenris’ mom’s name instead, Angrboða, the Witch of the Ironwood.  
> Eostra —> a strict masculinization would become Eastra or Ostaro, but I felt the implications were more important. This is where we get the word Easter, so: Resurrection.  
> Narrander —> as far as I can tell, his name renders literally as “corpse-man”, from PIE _naw_ -(corpse) + Greek - _andros_ (male). (Greek is a PIE descendant, I’m allowed to do that.) A strict feminization would probably read something like Narenn or Narann, but I wanted the implications for this one too, so: Death.  
>  Hord —> I can’t actually find an etymology for this one, but my guess is that it’s an alteration of Hoðr. I just gave it the more female ending and assumed the implications are the same.  
> Thiazzi —> is just straight up stolen from a giant in Norse mythology, so I just straight-up stole the name of that giant’s daughter. Even though it’s a female name it has the male ending.  
> Nef —> Nott is a Norse god of night. Not really meaningful but it sounds similar.  
> Seshru —> Sevi (or Sefi) is a Norse male name, meaning calm or gentle. Not really meaningful but it sounds similar.


End file.
